The musings, advice, stories, tips, and much more of a 25+ year veteran of the antiques business. From a picker to a picker/dealer, and back!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A Down & Dirty Picker Pictorial

Ok, unlike my usual posts, this one is going to be long......

Um, ok, yes, I know some......well, ok, ok, ok...I stand corrected......MANY of my posts ARE long...but this one isn't going to be long in a wordy sort of way....

This one is full of photos....action shots, if you will.

I tend to get pretty dirty, cobweb covered, dust coated, etc, etc in many places I pick, and I do search through quite a few "sketchy" places, as far as their overall condition goes.......Yep, I tend to get Down 'n' Dirty.....

And here we go!

This barn looks relatively safe and intact, right?

Ok, maybe not!

This wall waved back and forth when a breeze started....

Yes,
I walked around on this...that is the LOFT, by the way...it is a good story and a half up. I do not recommend you do something similar,
tho! I do have over 20 years of this sort of thing under my belt!

To say that the structure of this
place was not the best was an understatement.....beams were cracked and
breaking, etc. All the time I was working here I kept my ears wide open
for creaking, cracking, etc!

I have an affinity for old cellars...Why? Curiosity! That is where I always think the GOOD STUFF IS.....! I admit, that is not always the case, but I like to check everything out thoroughly.

Unfortunately, there was no way to find the trap door to access this house's cellar...too many leaves, debris, etc....access wasn't through the normal trap door...The cast iron cookstove, gravity and mother nature co-operated to create access to this one.

This was a picking a building that was quite clean, and in use...but the crawlspace had not been used since the 1950s...and the access to is was moved to a part of the building that only had a 2 foot space between the floor joists and the ground...then you back crawled/shimmied under the floor, and within a couple feet dropped down into the deeper portion of the cellar. It is an all dirt floor...quite dry, but that also means quite dusty..Each movement you make on the floor, or shifting something created a cloud of dust.

Respirator time!

REALLY dark! No lights in here!

I feel far more grungy than I look....

Sorry for the dark photo....per usual, there was no electricity in this building. What you see here is an estate that was stored in a barn for about 15+ years. This was a hog barn...and became infested with rats, mice raccoons, and who knows what else. Roof also leaked. I saw this stuff 15 or so years prior, but the family that owned the stuff was still hemming and hawing about what to do with it. At that time, I saw that there was about a few thousand dollars worth of stuff. When I obtained the opportunity to sort through it, many years later, this is what the pile looked like (above & below)

After diggin' through the pile a couple hours.

Some items rescued....most of the furniture was destroyed by rot, mice, and rats....in the end, the grand total realized from this mess was under $400! There were a few pieces of furniture here that WERE $500- $1500 pieces when I looked at them years back...and they were reduced to nothing more than glorifiedFIREWOOD...and not even that, with some of the parts so rotten that you could squeeze water out of them. THAT is what happens to items when they are left in uncontrolled conditions.

That is enough grunge, dirt, and dust for today....will post more photos of some of the stuff I have encountered soon!